Sound and light

It's amazing how much the weather impacts what you see and hear when you're out and about, and I mean out and about outside the confines of a vehicle. 

Back in the day, when I still had a job and didn't have the option of walking the dog at noon, and when they still had regular flights to Toronto from Thunder Bay and the Soo, you'd hear this propeller airplane overhead every morning around 7:15. It was a regularly scheduled flight, so I'm sure it went by at about the same altitude every morning, but some days it sounded like it was 100 feet overhead, and other times you couldn't hear it at all. 

Same with the passenger jets. There's not a lot of them anymore either, but, depending on weather conditions, they can be either totally silent, or sound like a B-52 coming in low and slow.

Weather determines what you see as well as what you hear. I come out the Grey Road 1 from Owen Sound almost every day. When you're going by the Kemble look-out, you can see Christian Island, a good fifty miles distant, clear as day. Sometimes.

Other times, you can't see it at all. 

Much depends on weather.

Welcome to the Kemble Emporium

Here it is.



This is a vacant storefront in the heart of Kemble. It used to be the general store in Kemble, but it has long since given up the ghost in favor of the Walmarts of this world.

I've been brainstorming like crazy with my pal Susan M, a Kemble lifer, on how we might be able to repurpose this old general store into a tavern/roadhouse/wine bar.

It's on offer, along with the house next door, for a paltry $129 thousands.

We been brainstorming pretty hard, and we can see the Kemble Impouring'em rising. First of all, we'll be the only liquor establishment between Owen Sound and Wiarton, at least if you take the scenic route. That's gotta be good news not only to thirsty locals, but to the folks from away en route to their million dollar summer homes on the water.

Secondly, that second house on the property really opens up some options. That could be a B&B. We're thinking we could offer up a special deal, where every hundred dollar bar tab gets you a free night's lodging at the Bed and Breakfast next door!

What a brilliant cross-marketing strategy! Don't worry about your excess alcohol consumption; we got a free pillow waiting for you at the end of the evening!

The Farm Manager is aboard too, and she'd be a valuable asset. All I know about wine is some is red and some is white. She actually knows all those fancy French names for them.

Like Peeno Greejio and Shablee and shit.

That looks to me like a space where you'd have more than enough room to have a little live entertainment, and the local area is chock full of A1+ musical types. Within a half hour drive we got everybody from the Becketts to the guy who played keyboards on a couple of Pink Floyd albums. Open mic night is gonna be spectacular!

Here's another salient fact; depending on how you read the maps, we are hard by the Bruce Trail! Just imagine all those super-thirsty and extra hungry hikers trekking past the front door! Hell, we could charge twenty bucks for a bag of Doritos and a bottle of water and they'd be thanking us!

And here's the coup de ville; the unsuspecting tourist stops in for wings and a jug of beer on Friday afternoon, and before they know it, they're waking up in their "free" lodgings on Sunday morning, and the Kemble United Methodist Pentecostal Unitarian Catholic Church is a mere lurch across the way!

Yup, we got you covered at the Kemble Emporium!

Choosing your weapon at Falling Downs

I bet Junior a hundred bucks that no matter which weapon he chose, I'd beat him around the block.

Let me explain the weapons.

In this corner, there's a twenty year old Kawasaki Ninja.

In the other corner, there's a twenty-five year old Mustang Fifty.

Let me explain the block.

We're in God's country here, and that's on top of living smack dab in the middle of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The "block" takes you through three hamlets; Wolsley, Lake Charles, and Kemble.

Wolsley is a former church, two houses, and a gas station turned bakery turned ghost town.

Lake Charles is a 90 degree hard right turn at Wolsley. It's got a church and five houses.

You take another 90 degree hard right at the church in Lake Charles and you're on a four mile straightaway to the Kemble Mountain Road. You can hit some ungodly speed on that stretch.

Then you've got some twisties and an absolutely divine vista unfolding before you on the other side of the Kemble Rock. Then you hit Kemble after another short straight of a mile or so.

Kemble is a post office, a church, and a couple of dozen houses. You make another hard right and head home. There's another set of twisties just as you're getting to Falling Downs. This is the stretch that sees the annual Porsche parade during the Cobble Beach Concours. If you went straight at Kemble instead of making that hard right, you'd be at Cobble Beach in five minutes and in Owen Sound in fifteen... at least if you were abiding by the speed limits.

So Junior picks the Mustang. I get the Ninja. The Ninja is a recent addition to our fleet, so I've not got around to getting either a helmet or a motorcycle license. Which is why I'm being extra slow and extra careful.

That Mustang can run the quarter in fourteen flat, but nevertheless I blow his doors off. There's no traffic at the Wolsley corner, so I use up all the road and I'm off to Lake Charles before he even shows up in my mirrors. That's a nice straight road and I can wring out the Ninja to a goodly turn of speed.

I spot him in the rear-view just as I'm braking for the turn at the Church in Lake Charles. I never see him again. I'm over the Rock and down the straight into Kemble at 125 mph. There's more in the Ninja but I want to take it easy.

I'm gonna try this flat out after I get a helmet.

Full stop at the Kemble corner, and I dawdle the last couple of miles back to Falling Downs.

Junior shows up five minutes later.

Old guys rule!

Bad moon over Kemble

Anybody who has read this blog more than once knows they're dealing with a notoriously unreliable narrator.

Hell, I can't narrate my own narrative without getting bogged down in side-stories and what-ifs...

Which is how Gaddafi turned up in Gaza playing chess with Shalit...

But no matter; this much is true:

It started with a short ride in a fast car.

We picked up Mrs. Traynor last night, in the way-too-fast Mustang Fifty.

Now you wouldn't normally assume that you could get from the depths of Grey County to Wayne County International Airport and back in one night.

But we had a really fast car.

Oddly enough, we had no trouble at all when we got to the border.

We let Mrs. Traynor do all the talking. She used to be an English teacher at the local high school.

She knows her subjunctives from her dangling particles, and by God can she cast a spell.

So we're at one of the little sheds just off the interstate, and we're trying to charter a plane to Las Vegas.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We can get there and back on a Lear for $20,000.

Great! I just happen to have a platinum Visa card with a 20 k max!

Then they run the card through. Available credit, 79 dollars and 28 cents.

There goes our Vegas dream.

So we headed back to Mrs. Traynor's modest cottage just off the main street in Kemble.

By now the night was over and the sun was ris. We were relaxing in the front yard of Mrs. Traynor's place, drinks in hand, when the bus from the Word of Life Tabernacle turned the corner and headed up the street.

Here's the word on the Word of Life Tabernacle; they don't just hate sin, they hate sinners, and they make no bones about it.

They have a mission, or an "outreach" as they like to frame it, which involves sending a bus around the entire county picking up kids whose parents are too pickled to take them to Sunday school.

We're somewhat into our cups and not feeling the slightest obligation to make nice with the Word 'o Lifers.

My children were raised into a robust agnosticism.

The farm manager's kids went to synagogue.

Mrs. Traynor never had any children.

So when the bus stops in front of Mrs. Traynor's humble cottage, to pick up the Robinson kids across the way, three middle-aged Las Vegas wannabees rise out of their lawn chairs, turn their backs, and drop their pants.

Bad moon over Kemble.

Occupy Kemble: taking it to the street in a small town

Kemble doesn't have a town square per se, so I took my demo to the lawn in front of the post office on Friday.

Mrs. Wallace, the post office lady, was not impressed. "Get the fuck off my lawn" were her exact words.

I was not deterred. I marched up and down with my sign. Somebody has to breathe new life into the flagging  Occupy movement.

"Pogey stamps not food stamps" my sign read. Lucy wore a sign that said "capitalism sucks."

Going for a touch of levity, I had a sign on Boomer that said "bow wow."

Mrs. Wallace didn't think any of this was funny. Sent her kids out with their BB guns. They were taking shots at my sign. When I almost got hit in the eye I hid in my tent.

Next thing I know Mrs. Wallace is kicking me through the side of my 6x9 Walmart camper's special.

"If you don't get your shit off the lawn right now I'm gonna have Billy put you and your tent through the wood-chipper!"

The wood-chipper? I didn't like the sound of that. And knowing Billy, he'd be likely to do it too. Did everything his missus told him. Once you've pissed her off you've pretty much got the whole town against you. Plus, and I wish I'd thought of this sooner, any government checks you might be expecting are definitely going to be taking the long way to your mailbox.

Time to reassess the situation. Besides, I was almost out of beer. Took the last two cans in and handed them to Mrs. Wallace.

"I'd like for you and Billy to have these" I said.

I think I made my point.